I’m not a fan of Stephen King. Gasp, shock, horror! No, but I really enjoyed The Dark Tower, a film based on the first of King’s The Dark Tower book series.
In this dystopian story a young boy called Jake (Tom Taylor) discovers that his visions are real connections to another world. He manages to
enter this other world and meet both its hero, the Gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), and the antagonist, the Man in Black, Walter O’Dim (Matthew McConaughey). The ‘tower’ is what keeps Earth from capitulating to the dark forces and its demise is therefore the baddies’ focus. To bring down the tower Walter and his cronies capture children from Earth, take them to the other side, put them in space rockets, and send them crashing into the tower. Jake’s unusual abilities, called ‘the shine’, become Walter’s focus, and so the battle between good and evil hots up.
Sound realistic? Well, er, no of course not. But it’s this imaginative storytelling, this excitement surrounding a world that just might exist…. that makes The Dark Tower really fun to watch. Improvements could be made – several of the scene changes need work and perhaps the editing too. And I saw glimpses of other stories mixed in: Harry Potter, for instance, and The Hunger Games. But then, which story is totally unique? According to Carl Jung’s theory of the Concept of the Collective Unconscious, archetypal story themes are passed down by writers and reappear in different settings.
Of interest to South Africans will be the fact that several South African actors appear in the film, and the filming locations were USA and Cape Town, South Africa.
The Dark Tower opened at cinemas in South Africa on Friday 8 September 2017. Enjoy!
a feast of tales 